“Where, indeed? But why ‘poor girl’?”
“Because she’s liable to be made uneasy at trifles. You’re not—only riled. But I don’t blame you: you’ve been on this infernal coast for three years.”
“There’s nothing the matter with the coast: it’s only the idiots——”
“Quite so: I seem somehow to feel that I’ve heard all that sort of thing before. I’m one of the idiots.”
“Far be it from me to contradict so able a diagnosis of——”
He caught the cushion which Minton hurled at him, and laughed. Then he became curiously thoughtful.
“By the way,” he said, “wasn’t it a bit rum that Koomadhi didn’t try to prevent your swinging out to that roof? He’s a medico, and so should know how such unnatural exertion is apt to play the mischief with a chap in such a temperature as this. Didn’t he abuse you in his polite way?”
“Not he,” said Minton; “on the contrary, I believe I had an idea that I heard him suggest... no, no; that’s a mistake, of course.”
“What’s a mistake?”
“That idea of mine—I don’t know how I came to have it.”